As 2003 winds to a close, it is perhaps timely to assess
the state of affairs in the nation's capital. As a long time resident of
Washington, DC, it is striking how this city has changed-and not for the
better.

The telltale signs of dictatorship and fascism abound
in this city on the Potomac. Some of the signs-concrete barricades and
8-foot walls around monuments-are apparent. Others, like video cameras,
although more subtle, are every bit as ubiquitous. For those who have never
visited Washington, DC, or who traveled here during better times, the city
that is suppose to represent the aspirations of the American people is
now a hollow shell of its former self.

The White House Ellipse is now a security bivouac. The
grassy area that once played host to Frisbee games between dogs and their
owners, touch football scrimmages, and throngs of tourists marveling at
the south fa×ade of the White House are largely gone. They have been
replaced by chain link fences, concrete Jersey barriers, menacing black
Secret Service SUVs, squad cars, and security "men in black"
armed to the teeth. Sitting in the midst of this security encampment is
the National Christmas Tree. Once surrounded by rosy-cheeked youngsters
who marveled at its thousands of ornaments and lights up close, the tree
is now viewed after dark from afar-its future as endangered as its rooted
relatives in the Rocky Mountain and Alaska National Forest and Wilderness
areas.

Vice President Dick Cheney sent out thousands of Christmas
cards this year that extolled the Bush administration's international imperial
agenda by suggesting God approves it. Taking a quote by founder Benjamin
Franklin out of context, Cheney's card read, "And if a sparrow cannot
fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can
rise without His aid?" Fascists, imperialists, and colonialists throughout
history have tried to invoke God's name in justifying their global ambitions.
The Bush-Cheney regime is no different and hopefully it will meet the same
fate as its fascist and imperial antecedents.

Across Constitution Avenue, the Washington Monument is
surrounded by an 8-foot wall, reminiscent of the one that used to divide
Berlin and the one now being built to bifurcate the West Bank. A similar
wall surrounds the U.S. Capitol-the so-called "peoples' house,"
and one has been erected on one side of the Supreme Court. The steps of
the Supreme Court are now largely restricted to access by "we the
people." The Capitol Building is constructing an underground security
control center that will soon screen Girl Scouts and 4-H Club members as
suspected terrorists.

If you are doing a news report or a documentary and set
down a camera tripod on the National Mall or at any of the monuments, you
will be confronted by nasty Park Police, who order you not to film without
permission from the Park Police. Bush's thugs in the Interior Department
even go after their own. US Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers was recently
fired because she had the temerity to question orders from above to use
her thin forces to take on even more "homeland security" surveillance
duties.

The famed Washington Metro system now bans the sale of
newspapers in its stations. Newspaper vending machines have been boarded
up. Trash piles up on subway platforms and trains because waste containers
on the concourses are also banned. Recorded announcements appeal to passengers
to report anyone who looks "suspicious." Recently there was an
incident in the Metro Center station in which a vicious Metro police German
shepherd viciously lunged at a man's seeing-eye dog. The police dog's handler
seemed amused by the incident while the poor blind man was truly as upset
and disoriented as his canine companion. The ghosts of Bull Connor of Alabama
(who ordered German shepherd attacks on African American civil rights marchers)
and the dog handling Nazi guards of Auschwitz must be smiling down on Washington,
DC.

Retractable barricades now appear around the Senate and
House office buildings. Streets around the Capitol, with their barricades
and guards, resemble Checkpoint Charlie in East Berlin or the armistice
site at Panmunjom on the 38th parallel of Korea. Even the once publicly-accessible
Library of Congress, complete with its own barricades, seems to say in
agony, "I'm closed to the public."

Fly out of or into Washington's National Airport and
you're informed that if anyone stands up within 30 minutes from takeoff
or landing, the plane will be diverted to another airport under military
escort. Of course, none of the planes involved in 911 took off from National
Airport. But in an era of Code Orange terror alerts being declared around
every American holiday, the people just do as their told and don't ask
why.

The Christmas Code Orange alert named Washington, DC,
as a likely target. Washington's tourist industry, already pummeled by
9/11, cannot take many more hits. But for an administration that has done
everything to block access to government buildings and monuments by tourists,
such alerts seem to fit in nicely with its overall goal of turning the
nation's capital into a sterile and gray Pyongyang or Cold War era East
Berlin. No sooner had the Texans taken over the White House, Washington
area caterers felt the pinch. Gone are the diplomatic receptions and elaborate
state dinners for visiting dignitaries. Washington's caterers, florists,
limousine drivers, hotels, upscale bars, and trendy restaurants immediately
felt this trickle down effect of Bush's low class approach to diplomacy.
Around my place of employment, a number of restaurants have shut their
doors. They include a trendy martini bar and restaurant, an upscale Spanish
tapas restaurant, an Italian deli, a health food eatery, and, unbelievably,
a Chinese restaurant. How many more Code Oranges and phony terrorist alerts
can this city take? Not many, I would suggest. The glamorous days of Kennedy's
Camelot and Reagan's "Morning in America" at the White House
are now in the distant past for America's capital.

Drivers and passengers who drive past the Pentagon on
Virginia state highways are confronted by menacing Humvees with their high
caliber machine guns pointed at the traffic. Virginia State Police cars
are required to stop suspicious vehicles on the highways long before they
approach the Pentagon. One such "suspicious" vehicle stopped
and searched during the past year was the Oscar Mayer "Weiner Mobile."
A number of commercial vehicles driven by dark skinned and hirsute men
have been stopped, questioned, and searched by police engaged in blatant
"ethnic profiling." Targets have included tow truck operators,
couriers, caterers, and airport shuttle van drivers.

Tours of the White House are out. So is the famous White
House Easter egg roll (it is now reserved for the kids of Bush's cabal
and select service peoples' children). Public tours of the FBI are a thing
of the past, so are those of the Pentagon. Forget strolling through the
Capitol Building unless you pay for an organized tour (the GOP trickle
up theory in action).

Sirens constantly wail in the nation's capital and its
Virginia and Maryland suburbs. One security expert has reported that Washington,
DC, Metro Police have sometimes been instructed to turn on their sirens
for no reason because police in Israel discovered that sirens are a psychological
deterrent to would-be terrorists. Add the sirens to the almost constant
noise from patrol helicopters, fighter aircraft, and the extremely high-pitched
whine from unmanned aerial vehicles and you realize you no longer live
in the capital of the Free World, but some bizarre Twilight Zone version
of the capital city of an America in its death throes after some sort of
nuclear cataclysm.

The Canadian embassy near the Capitol now appears more
and more like an American embassy in some Third World dictatorship or behind
the Iron Curtain. It represents a land that is still largely free--and
is becoming home to a growing number of American emigrs-but is under increased
political pressure from the fascists in Washington to adopt totalitarian
ways. Just as Hitler constantly berated neighboring Poland and France for
Germany's ills, the Bush fascists have accused Canada of being responsible
for last August's major power failure and now charge Canada with being
responsible for the first mad cow outbreak in the United States. Both charges
are patently inane.

Take part in a constitutionally-protected demonstration
in Washington and you are instantly espied by video surveillance cameras
situated around the capital, in monuments like the Lincoln and Jefferson
Memorials, on roof tops of office buildings, on helicopters and in glass
bubbles disguised as street lamps. Cameras will soon be installed on Potomac
River dinner boats so John Ashcroft can know who you are dining with and
perhaps even what you are talking about.

Washington's homeless, while still relatively large in
numbers, have been strategically moved away from places where they once
found refuge. Lafayette Park, across from the White House, has been emptied
of many of its homeless "residents," while other areas such as
Farragut Square and a small park across from the State Department are now
largely devoid of the homeless. Where have they gone? It is a question
that is often asked around Washington these days, but many fear the answer
they might receive.

The Washington Post has become nothing more than a version
of the old Soviet-era paper Pravda. In fact, its nickname has become "Pravda
on the Potomac." Rather than investigate the mysterious "suicides"
of anti-Iraq war foreign policy experts who were reported to have jumped
from Washington buildings and the mysterious death of a Bush family domestic
employee in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, the Post continues to sycophantically
treat the Bush regime as a legitimate, run-of-the-mill administration-publishing
puff pieces on Bush's dogs and White House Christmas decorations. White
House press credentials are considered as good as gold these days and the
Post will bend over backwards and forwards to keep its access to the West
Wing.

The Washington corporate media acts as virtual public
relations agents for the dictatorship. Instead of concentrating on the
myriad scandals that envelop the Bush-Cheney regime, corporate broadcasters
conduct propaganda-oriented interviews with the fascistic political leadership.
Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" allows First Lady "Pickles"
Bush to get away with comparing President Kennedy's famous Inaugural Address
on America setting an example for the rest of the world to her husband's
pathetic reasons for preemptive warfare. In response to Russert airing
a tape of a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King on volunteerism, Pickles invokes
Colin Powell, as if she were trying to say, "Yes, King's speech is
okay, but our colored man also said something important and better."
Eva Braun could have not been more condescending to the regime she blindly
served.

There is a chance to try and return the nation's capital
to the American people. Let us hope and pray that next Christmas the White
House will be boxing up the Bush family possessions for their shipment
back to the Crawford "Ranch." With a new administration, perhaps,
just perhaps, this city will begin to return to better days.